From February 2010, The Lumičre Reader will publish from its all-new website. This existing website will remain online in an archival capacity until we relocate its content.

A Sunny Place; Sugar, by Jeffrey S. Correa

JEFFREY S. CORREA is an undergraduate and lives in New Jersey. He is forever indebted to Zbigniew Herbert.

* * *

A Sunny Place

I imagined a moon on my last night
before my scheduled flight. Stifled a
yawn on my last night as she clasped
my hand and led me down flights of stairs.
A corroded corridor. A light fixture
flickered. As she led the way, still
holding my hand, I saw five feet, faces
hidden by smoke. A child chuckled
behind a closed door, penetrating a
fake silence. The faint smell of incense.
Her body’s phosphorescence. She
opened her door and vestiges suddenly
smacked me.

Sugar

I took a handful of rain-rotted sand
and smeared it on my cheeks. Thickets
of mist drifted over the waters. I could
barely see the fisherman’s boat; maybe
I didn’t see it, but rather assumed its
presence. I don’t remember. Other
duties required my attention. The lack
of the sun’s licks made it hard on such
days. Her sugar sweet call snapped me
from my reverie. Breakfast in her
company before tackling thankless work
had become a necessary prerequisite.
Even so, it was hard to silence the field’s
dissonance, always reverberating—the
ripples on the coffee’s surface. On that
day a sequence started, a new overseer,
and the first time we heard of the earth
consuming one of us.